"Advocating immigration does not promote liberty. The two are not connected. There is no evidence that opening one's borders improves the liberty situation. Stop believing this"This statement is clearly false, on a whole pile of axes.
- Immigrants are indeed human beings. If you count the impact on the immigrant as having zero moral weight, this is true, and it's morally crippled. If, on the other hand, you actually care even a little bit about other human beings outside your tribe, the statement is insane. Freedom is heavily purchased by rich countries. Roughly all the rich countries are massively more free than all the poor countries, and it appears that the cause of the freedom is the wealth. As countries get wealthier, they buy more liberty (just like they buy more clean water, and more of everything else good.) The move from Mexico to the USA is massive uptick in the freedom of the immigrant himself...and a negligible effect on the freedom of anyone else. And Mexico is only a moderately poor, moderately unfree country. Ghana, contrarily loses every freedom contest you can find. You already have to accept that only the ingroup counts for this statement to even be conceivable. Otherwise, it's blatantly obvious that immigration is the biggest easy expansion of human liberty available to humankind at the moment. Not least because "Restrictions on human movement are by far the most universal restriction on human liberty that’s socially acceptable today." Really, this is a sufficient argument. But...there's a lot more.
- Wealth matters, even outside the country. The immigration of someone from a poor country to a rich country changes their income & wealth by a factor of between 2 and 100. My departure from pure standard leftish libertarianism is to point out that whatever you care about liberty-wise...wealth is the best way to get there. Any real increase in individual wealth is a de-facto increase in liberty. Wealth is indeed the only social metric we need to measure for darn near any purpose. Given that immigrants increase massively in wealth, natives increase mildly in wealth, and low-skilled natives have unclear but very small impacts given immigrants...this is a big deal.
- Immigration decreases welfare as a fraction of GDP. Caplan, responding to Tino (My favorite anti-immigrationist ) cites the actual studies on immigration numbers:
(a) Almost everyone assumes that immigration increases the size of the welfare state; (b) AGS identified a mechanism going in the opposite direction; and (c) AGS showed that on international data, the net effect of diversity on the welfare state is indeed negative. There is a -.66 bivariate correlation between social spending as a percent of GDP and racial fragmentation, and this relationship persists controlling for per-capita income, region, and age distribution.
That's a pretty big impact. More immigrants leads to smaller welfare states, as folks don't want to spend their money on people who aren't like them. It's part of why homogenous Sweden is all-welfare, all the time, and ethnically and linguistically diverse Switzerland has little. More immigration = less welfare state, statistically. Is that a pro-liberty move? And you can't even object to the study in a standard anti-academic fashion, because the economists who study this stuff are, to the extent they are cathedralists, both pro-welfare and pro-immigration, so this study opposes their natural worldview. - Immigrants don't vote against freedom. The theory that immigrants vote against liberty in a democracy appears to have been tested, and found to be false...despite a whole lot of assuming that it does.
- Non-rich opinions and votes don't actually matter for policy. And even if that's how they voted...it appears that doesn't matter. Turns out that the opinions and preferences of the poor and the middle class have no impact whatsoever on US policy. Even if the poor immigrants tried to vote pro-welfare, it turns out that the system appears to be rigged to only respond to the desires of the rich. How surprising that the cronyism is working as designed.
Immigration massively increases liberty. Probably more so than any other political activity you could choose. Maybe ending the drug war would be competitive, but probably not. The idea that immigration doesn't impact liberty in a massively positive direction is either ignorance, or cheating in what you score.
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24 comments:
From the link at 4:
"I also expect that many readers are passably familiar with some of the excuses forwarded by those in the closed-borders camp and are eminently capable of judging the relative merits of each."
Didn't have to read far!
Meh,
Too obscure of a comment for me. I didn't follow you at all.
Aretae,
You've mentioned in passing how biases can affect truth-seeking. Do you not find it odd that this Caplan post uses the word "excuse"
ex·cuse
/ikˈskyo͞oz/
Verb
Attempt to lessen the blame attaching to (a fault or offense); seek to defend or justify.
Noun
A reason or explanation put forward to defend or justify a fault or offense.
Standard closed-minded snark.
And do you not see how the spastic and idiotic violence in the Muslim world over speech about their prophet is reflected in large immigrant communities throughout the West? Why do you want to bring violent protesters in? Do you enjoy the drama?
"ethnically and linguistically diverse Switzerland"
Linguistically, OK.
Ethnically?
This sort of diversity?
Man, I wish having Frenchmen among the Germans counted as diverse in certain other contexts.
(According to internet statistics, Switzerland is ethnically 65% German, 18% French, 10% Italian, 1% Romansh, 6% other.)
Oh my.
1) The humanity of immigrants demands that we let them in.
This is immigration as a social program, and this type of reasoning is used by every liberal/leftist to justify our current and future social spending to infinity. Refutation here is refutation of the Welfare State.
Also, I don't agree with your assertions here: Freedom is heavily purchased by rich countries. I'm not sure they are buying freedom -- the work and taxes to maintain a rich country are somewhat enslaving. Not everyone wants that deal.
Wealth = freedom? I'm not so sure. Anyone can move to Sweden. The Swede's can't move anywhere. The wealthy can drink more expensive wine than me, but they have fewer places to drink it.
The move from Mexico to the USA is massive uptick in the freedom of the immigrant himself...and a negligible effect on the freedom of anyone else.
Tell that to the three locals killed in front of my house by the two immigrants. Tell that to a native who had a future in central California. Maybe we need to define "negligible". Was the cost of letting Atta immigrate "negligible"?
I don't buy the "massive uptick in freedom for the immigrant". The one's I talk to don't seem too impressed with their greater "freedom". Half of all immigrants go back home. You sound like a salesman selling a marginal product, only selling for the ego boost, while screwing the customer. What do you get from an "easy expansion of human liberty"? From packing even more people into the US? Full disclosure, please. (I suspect you are just a liberal, anxious to give stuff away, 'cause that gives you cred with your tribe.)
con't:
2) wealth matters
"Economists know the price of everything, the cost of nothing."
3) Immigration decreases welfare as a fraction of GDP -- link to Kaplan/Tino debate.
Laughable. Breaking news: poor countries support less of a welfare state, so make your country poor, and you will have less welfare. "To save the village, we had to burn it to the ground."
4) Immigrants don't vote against freedom.
You are willing to bank on this? Good luck.
There was a link to a guest column at econblog, which from what I read showed the opposite of this assertion.
5) Non-rich opinions and votes don't actually matter for policy.
Yes, and nothing like a further dilution and fractioning of the populace to aid the plutocrats.
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Tit for tat is what we need when interacting with others, including immigrants. If ten Mexicans move here, then ten Americans should move to Mexico. If ten Somalis move to the US, then ten US citizens should move to Somalia. If you have a one way flow, then the receiver of the demographic sodomy will go extinct. As the keys to the last American institution are handed to the new owner, the demographic remnant can say:
"That was the place."
RSF,
1) Giving a dog a bone is a humanitarian program. Stopping some guy from kicking the crap out of a dog that did nothing to him is a justice thing. The claim continues to be that immigration restrictions are equivalent to kicking the crap out of the dog.
B. Moving back...with 10x as much money is a substantial freedom win for them.
2) good poem, bad argument.
4) Read closer. Statistical data does not support the hypothesis that immigrants vote differently.
5) It doesn't matter. The plutocrats won. Reducing immigration doesn't change that.
3) Right...there's only one large, rich, ethnically diverse country. The USA.
Why the heck would 10 americans want to move to mexico. The US has much much much better laws for wealth creation. The reason to move here is because the state hasn't broken wealth-creation. There is no symmetrical reason to move back. It's like saying: For 10 people to leave the chamber of beatings and come to the chamber of massage, 10 other people have to choose to leave the chamber of masssage and go to the chamber of beatings. Not coherent.
And it's hard for me to even parse your sentence, because you are so deeply group-centric. Let's talk about the poor individuals...and what they want to do...the groups aren't their primary defining characteristics. And the states aren't either.
Meh...
I agree that the guest-blogging graduate student has a poor choice of words. He probably even thinks that. But what he was doing was running statistical analysis on well-respected datasets. And the conclusion is powerful.
Your argument for immigration is the Liberal argument for all their activities. Here's your own words with substitutions:
"Wealth transfer from rich to poor countries, on a per-person basis, is an enormous benefit for the person, a moderate economic benefit for the country, an unclear economic impact on the richest folks in this country, and a poorly studied, potentially negative, certainly small other impact... However...the benefit to the poor person is so huge that the negatives have to be pretty large for anyone to be opposed to wealth transfer, unless they value the impact on the poor person at zero, or near zero."
"Central gov't regulation of economic life of business people by non-business people, on a per-person basis, is an enormous benefit for the person, a moderate economic benefit for the country, an unclear economic impact on the business folks in this country, and a poorly studied, potentially negative, certainly small other impact... However...the benefit to the non-business person is so huge that the negatives have to be pretty large for anyone to be opposed to business regulation, unless they value the impact on the non-business person at zero, or near zero."
"Drug laws, from non-drug users on users, on a per-person basis, is an enormous benefit for the drug free person, a moderate economic benefit for the tribe, an unclear economic impact on the poorest folks in the tribe, and a poorly studied, potentially negative, certainly small other impact... However...the benefit to the non-user is so huge that the negatives have to be pretty large for anyone to be opposed to drug laws, unless they value the impact on the non-user at zero, or near zero."
Read closer.
Always a good call when I'm involved, but I'm not impressed with that study, based on interviews. No one flat out says they are for welfare, but a lot vote that way when in the booth.
The plutocrats won. Reducing immigration doesn't change that.
When you are bleeding to death, why open the wound wider?
there's only one large, rich, ethnically diverse country. The USA.
Not for long, so you can cross us off the list of places to be, and places that worked.
I figured you'd point to places like Singapore and Switzerland as counter examples, but they are anomalous, and were built by a high IQ ethnic majority.
For 10 people to leave the chamber of beatings and come to the chamber of massage, 10 other people have to choose to leave the chamber of masssage and go to the chamber of beatings.
Then we should not trade with the chamber of beatings. We are not going to affect their proceedings in a substantial way, and they send us Muhammad Atta.
Aretae
"I agree that the guest-blogging graduate student has a poor choice of words. He probably even thinks that."
Or he views his choice as ideal because his tribe has taught him how to speak about their shared enemy.
"But what he was doing was running statistical analysis on well-respected datasets. And the conclusion is powerful."
Where in the GSS does it ask about drawings of Mohammed and free speech issues?
When I ask Seattle Muslims about the Muslim freakout of the day, they respond like the guys on web clips, complete with threats. Maybe the GSS doesn't do a good job on this because sociologists are (according to Haidt) almost all liberals. Like you and Caplan's guest blogger, they know how these things are supposed to be handled.
Aretae,
The problem with most of your post is this: "If you count the impact on the immigrant as having zero moral weight, this is true"; it is abundantly obvious that the commenter you are quoting means just that.
He is only referring to the liberty situation of the country, not the individual liberty achieved by the immigrant coming to that country. Very groupism, yes, but that should not be surprising given your view on most people having a collection of group oriented rabbits in their heads.
Maybe your buff pixie toads can't see that he really meant it from that perspective, however.
-crazychicknlady
-crazychicknlady:
Are we our brother's keeper? You seem to think so, but this opens up a whole 'nother dimension to public policy, one which I thought libertarian's largely avoided by focusing on property rights. But apparently even libertarians are anxious to build a world wide welfare state.
Come on RSF, really?
Actually we libertarians are most aggressively trying to prevent the fascist state that everyone else seems to be running towards.
Especially the conservatives who want collective ownership of property like the communists, and governments to control where people can live. Get those two things, and you're almost all the way to mussolini.
Individual ownership of property I thought was a pretty simple idea. And individuals having individual rights, and not being slaves of the state who can't leave without permission or cross-state negotiation was also basic humanity 101. Apparently not.
I'm going to come out and say that Fred's point about the initial bias of Caplan's post was very clear to me too.
Other than that I can't say, because I live in a country where the largest number of immigrants are Chinese, Filipinos and Indians. Where visas are granted on the basis of skills, education and business performance, and where the immigrant population votes right of center. Hence the very word "immigrant" means something completely different to me, and I'd actually be arguing about something entirely different from you guys.
RSF,
Huh?
-crazychicknlady
Okay, not really about libertarians building a wide, wide, world of welfare. I went hyperbolic.
But it illustrates that when faced with a humanitarian issue, people toss principle and go welfare. And down the hole we continue.
RSF,
Maybe I was unclear (you certainly were), my Huh? was meant to ask:
How did my original comment to Aretae imply that I believe we are our brothers keeper and I wish for a universal welfare state?
-crazychicknlady
I think the only thing one can say about immigration is that migrants are seeking opportunity. That's one of those self-evident statements that ought to go without being said.
What type of opertunity obviously depends on the individual. Some are no doubt seeking economic opertunity via anarcho-capitalist voluntary transactions but others are simply looking for easier victims to loot.
Whether open immigration leads to greater freedom of the society in general cannot be tested without some sort of control group. Clearly freedom has been loosing out to state control for the past 200 years, and clearly we have had a very open immigration policy for most if not all of those 200 years, but there is no objective data to suggest whether the rate of decay into statist oppression has been accelerated or moderated by such a policy.
Aretae,
Besides sharply limiting immigration, the people of your model multicult also voted by a wide margin to stop the building of minarets there.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minaret_controversy_in_Switzerland#_
I guess this means that your model society is actually ... a fascist state, right? You need to use a better example. Maybe you can point to some euro country where Muslim immigrants are not seen as repressive, vicious haters.
RSF,
I think you have it backwards. When people have a choice, they toss liberty, and go nationalist-fascist.
Exit is the fundamental freedom. The one that comes before speech and association.
Oh, I think everyone goes liberty first. Nationalist-fascist is a tactic during a struggle, which is pretty much ongoing in a crowded world.
I'll agree exit is fundamental, but is it even an option in a crowded world? Is it reasonably available? Is it reasonable for Egyptians to have exit to anywhere they want? Who is going to enforce this freedom, and under what terms?
"Anywhere they want" would be a right to enter, not a right to exit.
Who "enforces" any right? Denying someone their right to exit makes someone evil, but people get away with evil acts all the time. e.g North Korea.
Alex J.: I link exit with enter, unless there is a frontier. People leaving Egypt don't just blast off into deep space, and where they move has widespread implications in an interdependent world.
Who "enforces" any right?
Always my first question.
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